In the first installment of a compelling new series by Elly Griffiths, a band of magicians who served together in World War II track a killer who’s performing their deadly tricks.

Brighton, 1950. The body of a girl is found cut into three pieces. Detective Inspector Edgar Stephens is convinced the killer is mimicking a famous magic trick—the Zig Zag Girl. The inventor of the trick, Max Mephisto, is an old war friend of Edgar’s. They served together in a shadowy unit called the Magic Men, a special ops troop that used stage tricks to confound the enemy.

Max is on the traveling show circuit, touring seaside towns with ventriloquists, sword-swallowers and dancing girls. He’s reluctant to leave this world to help Edgar investigate, but advises him to identify the victim quickly — it takes a special sidekick to do the Zig Zag Girl. Those words come back to haunt Max when the dead girl turns out to be Ethel, one of his best assistants to date. He’s soon at Edgar’s side, hunting for Ethel’s killer.

About the Author:Elly Griffiths’ Ruth Galloway novels take for their inspiration Elly’s husband, who gave up a city job to train as an archaeologist, and her aunt who lives on the Norfolk coast and who filled her niece’s head with the myths and legends of that area. Elly has two children and lives near Brighton. The House at Sea’s End is her third crime novel.

A WINSOME MURDER by James Devita

A grisly murder in a pastoral Wisconsin town, Winsome Bay, proves to be only the opening act in a twisting, darkening series of gruesome deaths. Acclaimed already for his young adult fiction, actor/director/playwright James DeVita now debuts an addictive, adult thriller that takes us from Chicago’s underbelly to the Wisconsin woods.

In this fast-paced novel we meet a gorgeous waitress with a haunted past, an author juggling a failing career and motherhood, and a hard-bitten detective with unexpected inspiration from William Shakespeare’s bloodiest plays—and nobody escapes the nightmare created by a psychotic killer of women.

Another death, another magic trick: Edgar and Max are sure the answer to the murders lies in their army days. And when Edgar receives a letter warning of another “trick” on the way — the Wolf Trap — he knows they’re all in the killer’s sights.

About the Author:
James DeVita, a native of Long Island, NY, is an author and playwright, and an actor. His new novel, A WINSOME MURDER, an adult mystery, was recently published by UW-Press. His YA novel, THE SILENCED, is being re-printed in paperback this year by Milkweed Editions. Along with his third novel, BLUE, James has also written more than twenty plays and adaptations of classics for young audiences and adults.

His plays include: A Midnight Cry (The story of the Underground Railroad); Rose of Treason (The true story of Sophie Scholl and The White Rose); Trials: the story of Joan of Arc, and Beth; A Little House Christmas; The Prince and the Pauper; Zero Tolerance (Youth violence); Wonderland! (Musical based on Lewis Carroll’s work); The Christmas Angel; Treasure Island; Dinosaur!; Looking Glass Land; Bambi, A Life in the Woods; Arthur: The Boy Who Would Be King; Looking Glass Land; Swiss Family Robinson; Tom Sawyer; Huckleberry Finn.

Adult works for the stage: A Gift of the Magi (a musical); Dickens In America; The Desert Queen (The Life of Getrude Bell); In Acting Shakespeare (with the permission of Sir Ian McKellen); Lakeview; The Three Musketeers; Artis Generis; Waiting for Vern.

Jim was the resident playwright for First Stage Children’s Theater for nearly fifteen years. His adaptation of Felix Salten’s novel, Bambi, a Life in the Woods, won The Distinguished Play Award from The American Alliance of Theater and Education; Rose of Treason was awarded The Intellectual Freedom Award by the Kentucky Council of Teachers of English/Language Arts; and Looking Glass Land won the Shubert Fendrich Memorial Playwrighting Contest. Jim is also a recipient of the National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowship for Fiction, and The American Alliance of Theater and Education has just honored his body of work with the 2007 Charlotte B. Chorpenning Award.

Jim lives in WI where he is a core company member of American Players Theater, a classical repertory theater. He has been a member of the company there for twenty-one years as an actor, as well as a director for past five. His first feature film, Madison, was released in 2008 by Mirror Cinema Productions. Jim is a member of The Dramatists Guild, ASSITEJ, SCBWI, and Actor’s Equity Association.

To be entered in the drawing shoot an email over to Jon?@crimespreemag.com (remove the question mark) And put CONTEST in the subject line. Also please put your address in the body of the email.